Bertha the Big Bird

I went shopping for the annual Big Bird today.  Not the fluffy yellow Sesame Street Bird with bugged-out eyes, of course, but a real-frozen-solid-meaty-bird to stuff with sage dressing and serve with mashed potatoes and gravy for Thanksgiving

In general, turkeys don’t excite me.  I enjoy eating the flesh (especially dark meat), but also shudder when I think that every turkey carcass in mainstream groceries has been injected with a tasty-but-mysterious “broth” laced with test-tube-additives.  Even before this, the living gobblers are pumped full of excessive growth hormones because they must grow disproportionately BIG (it’s the American way) and FAST (we’re impatient and want a cheap bird).  They are also shot-up with antibiotics in order for them to survive the sometimes-deplorable conditions of turkey farms.  Sounds like a fowl-ed up chemical brew to me!

On the other hand, unadulterated, chemical-free, organic turkeys exist (somewhere, but not in the grocery store) for around $8.00/pound, which I refuse to pay until some future date when I am a rich and famous author basking in excessive book royalties.  

So anyway, there I was this afternoon, standing in the meat section before two enormous freezer-bins of rock-hard turkeys prettily shrink-wrapped in plastic. To be (a Butterball), or not to be (a Butterball), THAT was the question.

The turkeys looked like little frozen mummies in those tight wrappings, prepared to sit in their mass graves (freezer-tombs) indefinitely. I looked and looked, laboring over which of the stacked-up clones to choose.  Then in a second of rash impetuousness, I did the traditional patriotic American thing, put all thoughts of an organic bird out of my mind, and reached for….

Bertha.  I was just sure if this plastic-shrouded bird had been given a name (which it most certainly hadn’t), it would have been Bertha.

This Bertha-bird was a generic turkey (bye-bye Butterball, Bertha was cheaper), one somewhat smaller than my turkeys of recent years.  Due to an ever-enlarging family, I’d gotten into the habit of choosing a mammoth turkey between 22 and 25 lbs.  This year I settled for a 15-pounder.  Bertha is still an imposing size, but a baby-hippo-of-a-bird instead of a grandma-elephant-of-a-bird.

It's true that Bertha will still be much too big since our table will seat only four adults this year. But what’s Thanksgiving without the dramatic presentation of a crispy-brown Big Bird?  Plus Bertha’s carcass will simmer into broth that will become a big pot of incredibly delicious wild rice soup, which I confess is my favorite part of the turkey.  Mmmmmmmm, I can already imagine Bertha’s aromas filling every nook and cranny of the entire house with post-Thanksgiving turkey-smells.